


Jar

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/F, Healing, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stress Baking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2102502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days - most days - are still pretty hard, there's a lot of adjusting to do.  So she takes up baking.  Set after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2010423">Detachment</a> and around the same time as <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1095816">Day By Day</a></p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: jar</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jar

Miranda is already gone when Perdita finally wakes up properly, sort of half-awake when the cold air of the room hit her as the blankets rustled, listening to the sound of the shower and Miranda moving around, drying her hair, getting dressed, kissing Perdita goodbye and asking if she wanted anything. It felt like before, on the Normandy before she had to hand it over, three hundred-thousand batarians dead because of her. Lying in bed Perdita can forget about her artificial leg and how her scars look different to the ones that healed before, more like cracked glass spreading out across her skin or fractals, something that gives her nightmares until Miranda wakes up, strokes the edges carefully with her fingers or presses kisses to them. No words, she doesn't need them although those happen too, Miranda's breath tickling her ear as she tells Perdita how much she loves her, that she doesn't love her in spite of how she's changed, but that she loves _Perdita_ and every single inch of her.  
  
It helps. Well it does when Perdita's brain is cooperating because she understands herself that she has things to work through and that it's normal to feel how she feels but it doesn't make it any less frustrating when she can't make herself believe it and when she loses her temper for no reason or when the panic grips her and she can't breathe and finds herself frozen in place, often retreating just to be alone. It's always easiest when she's tired and not fully aware of herself.  
  
Sometimes it's just easier to have time to herself which makes her feel guilty because Miranda has done so much for so little, twice over now but Miranda needs space too. It's nice to just wake up and be able to do things at her own pace with no eyes, no biting of the lip from Miranda when Perdita's struggling and she's trying to weigh up if she should intervene or leave Perdita to it. Her limp is much less pronounced – in time it'll be gone but sometimes her leg just doesn't feel like it's there at all and the change in weight isn't something she's used to yet either. She was allowed out of hospital because she was climbing the walls and really, any progress was good. But she remembers how she used to be and she grits her teeth, makes her way downstairs (Miranda tried to argue for them relocating downstairs and Perdita, being angry and tired, hurting and stubborn said that was fine, Miranda could do that and sleep on the couch) to the kitchen. She's discovered that she actually really enjoys cooking, so long as she sits down for most of it and they've got comfortable stools at the island so she can actually work at the right height.  
  
She was decent enough to look after herself when she was in training and living on her own back before she was ever assigned to the Normandy but growing up in space, she got used to someone else cooking for her. These days? Well she's not going to be challenging anyone for some sort of title but she's learned a lot. Baking is her speciality. She's in control – she can weigh things out precisely, there's an order and structure to it and it's been helping her memory, another thing that bothered her thanks to her injuries because sometimes it's as though her mind goes completely blank, not old things but new, like the conversation she's just had or remembering if she answered her messages not long after she's done.  
  
It's something at least and even when it doesn't help, she's got a biotic metabolism still and everything just seems harder so she's almost always hungry anyway, she'll never say no to curling up with cakes or cookies or whatever else she's tried her hand at.  
  
Sighing, she skims through the extranet for some new sort of recipe, some sort of challenge and she's not actually thinking when she pulls the jar of sugar instead of getting up to grab it but it's there in her hand and she's grinning at it like a maniac. She laughs so hard she cries and then laughs again and she's laughing about being able to pull a fucking jar from a cupboard and into her hand when she learned how to use biotic techniques from Aria T'Loak after the mission to Omega.  
  
Miranda comes home to far too many cakes for them to possibly eat between them and Perdita smiling more than she's smiled in months, all over pulling a jar down and across the room and into the palm of her hand but it's a good day, a _really_ good day and it's been a long time since Perdita's had one of those.


End file.
